


Dust Storms and Lightning

by Bluejay141519



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: AU Everybody lives/nobody dies, Developing Relationship, Gen, Hurt Faraday, They get lucky, Vasquez just needs a hug, honestly im so bad at tagging im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:09:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluejay141519/pseuds/Bluejay141519
Summary: Faraday and Vasquez are sent to investigate a nearby town rumored to have an murderer on the loose.It doesn't go well.





	Dust Storms and Lightning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DjDangerLove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/gifts).



> For DjDangerLove who posted a thing on tumblr that i took as a personal challenge. 
> 
> "All the love to anyone who will write a story for me where Faraday and Vasquez end up stranded somewhere complete with angst, hurt/comfort, and a tad bit of fluff to wrap things up. I still have so much love to give to anyone who writes this for me! Please, sweet and precious fandom. Please!”
> 
> For you dear, because you write such good fics for this small fandom.

Vasquez was tired.

Faraday was dying, and Vasquez was _tired_.

Tired of trying to hide his fear, his feelings. Tired of being afraid of his own shadow. Tired of _running_.

Their horses were gone. The food, tools, blankets and extra weapons that they carry are gone with them. What they have is either hanging from their belts, or it's the clothing on their backs. They’ve managed to cross the few miles of desert in the afternoon and now, as the sun sinks to the horizon, the sorry pair stumbles into corps of trees with four bullets between them and bone dry canteens.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Of all the jobs to go wrong, Vasquez would have pegged this to be the least likely. But then, he supposes that's why it did.

It wasn’t that they weren’t careful. They always are. (or he is, anyway. Faraday teased him about it on the way in- “ _It’s just a robbery warrant, who we aren’t even arresting. We’re just goin’ in and lookin’ around and leavin’, would you stop being so_ tense.”)

Living as a fugitive for three years earns you habits that don’t just go away the second you have a group surrounding you. Even if it's been six months since they left Rose Creek, and the merry band of misfits has proven to be very protective of their ‘ _Texican_ ’, the need to always be on alert when riding into a town has yet to dissipate.

And given the recklessness of the man he has slung over his shoulder (the man he’s slowly falling for, but _damn_ Joshua if he ever get him to admit it), it never will.

No, the problem certainly wasn’t Vasquez, and rather ironically, this time it wasn’t Faraday either.

The problem was the information.

The group had been holed up in a quiet little township, just a place to stay while most of the group recovered from a bad cough caught by Goodie and spread by Billy. They were all mostly recovered, eating a small dinner in the main room of the boarding house they were staying at when a man walked in, looking wearily for a safe place to stay.

_“I’m sorry sir but I’m all full up righ’ now. I can talk to the sheriff, I’m sure one of the townsfolk will have a room for you.” The owner looked sincere in his apology, wringing his hands slightly at having to turn away money._

_“No need sir, we can share a room with my comrade over here.” Faraday pipes up, startling Vasquez enough that he looks away from his food to raise an eyebrow at him._

_“Really, guero? What makes you think I want to sleep in the same room as you?” Joshua just grins._

_“Relax Vas, I don’t snore.”_

_“That does not make me feel better.”_

_“It should.” Goodnight interjects. “You ever heard Billy snore? Shit, I’d take Faraday talking in his sleep any day.” The war veteran dodges a piece of bread flung at him by his lover while Faraday starts to vehemently deny the accusation."_

Vasquez snaps out of the memory with a sharp pang of longing echoing in the emptiness he feels inside. What he wouldn’t give to know that they were at least looking for them. But the odds that they even think something is wrong are slim to nil. They weren’t supposed to come back till late tomorrow. ‘ _With the rate things are going’_ Vasquez thinks grimly, ‘ _we’ll both be dead by then._ ’

The man was grateful to them. Then Sam asked where he was coming from, and that sparked a whole conversation which inevitably led to the stranger (his name was Mason, and while he was at least six feet tall with a stocky build, he was nicer than most) making a comment about how he had to ride longer to skip going to Fire Street, a town closer to his destination than the one we were in.

Apparently there's been a man there who’s been terrorizing the town and its surrounding travels with a rather large gun and some good skill to use it should whoever he’s robbing try to refuse him. The catch (and the reason why Chisolm thought it good to send the two up for a few days to look around) was that no one could put a name to the face, because the man wore a piece of cloth over his nose, and the hat low over his eyes. His voice was different every time he robbed someone, and given it had been going on long enough that rumors were starting to spread about the town, somebody had the notion that it might be someone who lived there.

“ _Just give it a look. Don’t start blowing up the town or anything, we just need to know if it’s true._ ” That's what Chisholm had said when they left.

‘ _Oh it was true, alright._ ’ Vasquez thinks as he drags Faraday over the gnarled roots of half dead trees to take them farther into the woods. It was true and then some. See, what the stranger had neglected to say (whether because he was working with the man or because he didn’t know) was that after the guy robbed them, he shot them. There were no witnesses to talk to, and even if there was, Edwardo sincerely doubted they’d have said a word to them. Oh and hey, by the way, it isn’t one guy holding up a fairly large sized town known to not have a sheriff of any kind. Nono, it was an _entire group._

One of who, recognized Vasquez the second he walked into the hotel, and another who put two and two together when he saw Faraday’s limp. Apparently they’d heard of what the seven did in Rose Creek (at this point, most people had heard about the seven men who defeated an army for nothing more than a few cents and their stubborn pride). How they knew Vasquez and Faraday was with them was still a mystery the former rancher had yet to solve.

In retrospect, they should have realized something was wrong with the man's story. Fire Street may sound small, but the name was given after a group of bandits set main street a blaze. Once they were driven out, it retained that name because of the amount of gunfire heard throughout its trails. A town that big, and one man had managed to kill six people in broad daylight and rob another dozen or so, and _nobody_ knew _anything_ about it?

A very unlikely story. One that cost Faraday a nice blow to the head and a bullet in his side and subsequently took a few years off Vasquez’s life.

“You’re going to be the death of me one day Joshua.” He mutters as he finally finds a decent spot to rest. They must be approaching the river gorge that runs around the outskirts of the town they're fleeing, as the trees have suddenly become much larger and thicker. The large pine is surrounded by others of its kind, and hearty bushes have shoved themselves in between the trunks, making the clearing one you can’t see unless you stumble into it, which is exactly what Vasquez and Faraday happened to do.

Rather, Vasquez stumbled. Faraday was dragged.

“That’s no way to talk to a dying man.” Comes the breathless reply once Joshua is seated on the ground, leaning back against a large boulder with a bush growing on top of it.

The instant the words are out of his mouth Faraday is trying to correct it as his friend (and that’s all they are, Josh insists to himself everyday, while knowing damn well he’s a goner for the bearded man) visibly blanches at the word ‘ _dying_ ’.

“Fuck, Vas, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” He says as he gets to his knees to look at the wound on Josh's abdomen. “You were not the one who put this bullet here.”

“No.” He agrees, an edge of self loathing creeping into his voice. “But if I had been a little quicker on the uptake, then he wouldn’t have been able to hit me on the head and you wouldn’t have had to come back for me-”

“Guero.”

“-and then you would’ve had the horses ready and I wouldn't have-

“Faraday.”

“-gotten shot and we would’ve been back in Lightning Hills by no-”

“ _Joshua_.” Vas practically yells, the use of his first name finally enough to get Faraday to listen as his partner puts a hand on his neck.

“None of this is your fault. You didn’t know-”

“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know! Even if I did, when I went to move I - my leg it just - I wasn’t as fast as you. I should’ve been.” The last part of his outburst is quieter, and the guilt and self loathing in his voice makes Vasquez want to snarl. When Joshua survived the massive explosion that destroyed the grappling gun, the team decided they should take Hornes word for it and believe in miracles. He was left somehow with all his fingers and toes, and while he had some bad bleeding underneath his skin, it was the bullet to his leg that left him with the most obvious scar. It shattered the bone in his thigh, and left him barely able to put weight on it after a long day of riding. If he sat down too long, it would get stiff, and getting up stairs whenever his muscles decided to cramp was near impossible.

Joshua has been wary of it ever since, and every time something went wrong, he found a way to blame it on himself and his ‘inadequacy’. He actually believed the group would ride off without him, when everyone else was mostly healed but he wasn’t.

...

“ _You- you're still here?” The look of pure surprise on Faraday’s face is matched by Chisholm's own as he looks at Vasquez who’s just entered the room, confused as all heck._

_“‘Course. Why wouldn’t we be?” Joshua blinks a few time, sitting propped up in bed, his cards sitting quiet on his lap, hands still for once._

_“W-well, y’all went down stairs and were talking bout the horses and I-...well I thought…” Faraday blinks, and flash of some hard to define emotion passes across his face. He takes a deep breath to talk again, but Sam beats him to it._

_“We wouldn’t leave without at least asking you, you know.”_

_“What?” Vasquez grins the the childish innocence that’s taken over the injured cowboys voice._

_“Well you see Goodnight and I got to talking - we got a good thing goin’ here - and he thought that maybe he’d stick with me for a while. Take down some bigger bounties. And of course since I said yes then Billy is coming, and then Red said yes before I even thought to ask him, and Horne overheard and decided he would tag along so we wouldn’t stray too far from the Lords presence or something like that. So that leaves you two, and I’d mighty like it if you said yes. I need somebody to help me keep sane what with Rocks and Goody around.”_

_“Wha-Wait really? Sam, I’m honored but - I mean, I’m...I’m not exactly...as good as I might have been and I’ll really only slow you down I-”_

_“Guero, he is not as stupid as you.” Vasquez says from the doorway he’s leaning against, tone good natured. “He knows all this, but he asks anyway. Almost like he doesn’t care that you are different.”_

_“Right but...Vas you-_

_“I go if you go Cabron.” He says, casually inspecting the floor beneath his boots. This seems to strike something within him (because damn Faraday if he lets Vasquez go back to a life of running with no protection) and he agrees._

_He still seems slightly dazed at the fact they actually waited for him when he mounts his demon horse to ride out with them._

_..._

Vasquez blinks a few times, shaking his head, going back to his self appointed task of fixing Faraday's wound as best he can.

“I’m glad you weren’t as fast as me. If you were, we’d both be dead.”

“Vas-”

“ _Escucha a mi tu hijo de puta_ -” Vasquez snaps, finally uncovering the still bleeding bullet wound. “-you were _faster_ with your gun than I was. I was barely paying attention to them-” _‘because I was so scared that you were dead’_ Vasquez leaves out. “-that I would have my head made into a canoe by the time I pulled my gun. If I remember correctly, _you_ were the one who dragged me out of that damn bar, with your guns empty except for one shot because you were _firing_ faster than I was to keep those crazy pendejos from catching up to us because you were _running_ faster than I was. So don’t tell me any of this was your fault guero, I will not buy it.”

The man in question huffs but stays silent except for a few grunts of pain as Vasquez works to replace the hastily applied, blood soaked bandage that was formerly the bandanna from the Mexicans neck. They had fled into the steep cliffs and hills that the town was built right next to, and from there they had twisted and turned through different paths until they lost their pursuers and their sense of direction. Vasquez had climbed up a fairly safe rock face to look around, and it was there he saw the line of vegetation across a short expanse of desert (as compared to the miles and miles they normally cross). From there it had only been a matter of helping a slightly delusional and profusely bleeding Faraday cross said desert.

“Hold this.” Vas commands, his voice harsher than normal. “And give me your canteen. I’m going to see if I can find some water before the sun disappears completely.” When Faraday doesn’t move except to blink dazed, glassy eyes at him, Vas takes his hand in his and presses it to the folded square of cloth that was part of his undershirt. Joshua holds it there when Vasquez removes his hand, and says nothing as he unties the canteen from his belt.

Before he leaves he takes Maria from Faraday's belt and slips his own gun into Joshua’s free hand.

“Shoot anything that moves. And that isn’t me. Got it?” Faraday's head bobs loosely, but he cocks the pistol nonetheless and seems to make an effort to be more aware. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.” He grips the back on the sick man's neck once more, giving it a squeeze before leaving.

Faraday, for his concussed brain and inadequate blood supply, is more aware than he feels he should be. He knows he’s in trouble, if the way his thoughts has slowed to a grinding halt are any indication. It's almost like he can feel the bullet slowly killing him, like it's something that has conscious thought and a malicious personality. Like it intentionally hit him in the same exact spot McCann's bullet hit him at Rose Creek.

While Vasquez ventures to get water without falling into the gorge he can hear roaring somewhere to his right, Joshua does his best not to fall asleep, because he’s sure Vas would not appreciate returning to that sight. He exhausted yes, but his body is in so much pain he can’t seem to relax. It's a good thing, he supposes, because Vasquez wouldn’t want to come back to-

Faraday blinks his eyes open once he realizes his thoughts have started to run in circles. Again. They did that the entire time Vas was crossing the desert with him, and he was so dizzy and confused he's pretty sure he said most of what he was thinking out loud. Which would suck, seeing as at one point he thought about how being carried as he was at the time was not nearly as romantic and he wished it be, and then he started thinking about how he wanted the sun to be setting all nice and colorful like it does sometimes and then they’d get to the top of a cliff and there'd be some real pretty view and then Vas would tell him that he liked Faraday just as much as Faraday liked him and seriously if he said this out loud he wishes he would die already to save himself the mortification of having to deal with it.

“What did I say about going anywhere, guero.”

“I haven’t?” There's two dull thumps, and Faraday peels open his eyes to see the canteens on the ground, which incidentally is eye level with him. Caught between wondering when he slumped over and when he fell asleep he moves to push himself back up, but Vasquez pushes him back down, instead helping him situate his body to be lying on his back, head and shoulders propped up against a smaller tree.

“No, but technically sleep is a place right? And that is what you were doing.”

“Listen here you damn Texican, stop smoking Billy’s cigarettes alright. That made no sense.”

“No?” Vasquez tilts his head to the side with a smile, unscrewing the cap of Joshua's now full canteen. “Then why do we always say we’re ‘going to it’ if it's not a place huh?” He helps the injured man sip at the cool water while pressing a hand back onto the wound. Faraday moans in pain and writhes under the pressure.

“I’m sorry guero, I need to stop the bleeding.”

“Damn thing…” Faraday gasps once the bottle is taken from his lips. “...hasn’t stopped bleeding since I got it.”

“That’s because we were moving.”

“Yeah. Sure it is.” Vasquez jerks his head up to stare at his lovers his friend's pale face, staring at him with dark eyes and a somber expression.

“You giving up hope there cowboy?” He says, sitting back on his haunches and rummaging through his pockets to see what he might have to help them. Or at least, to keep his hands busy and give his eyes a reason to be looking anywhere but Joshua’s face. It’s silent for a moment, then Faraday starts again in a low voice. The sun has set by now, the clearing bathed in near darkness.

“Vas...we don’t have a chance out here.”

“They _will_ _look_ for us.”

“Yeah tomorrow maybe! They don’t even know anythings wrong and if they did, how the hell would they find us?! We have no idea where we are, we have no horses, no food, no shelter and I’m bleeding out on the sand. Jesus, we barely got out of there alive, and that was with a shit ton of luck and the small element of surprise.”

“They will look for us.” Vas insists, finally giving up on his search (he’s found an old piece of paper, a few shell casings, and a small knife that might be Billy's) to sit next to Faraday. “And they _will_ find us.”

“Before or after I-”

“Enough of this guero. I don't want to hear it.”

“Vas I need you to-”

“I said enough. _Silencio hombre tonto_ , you hear me? I will not let you die.”

“What can you do to stop it?” He rasps, subtly leaning against Vasquez and reveling in the warmth said body seems to radiate against the cooling air.

“Joshua-”

“I need - I need you to know okay? Just shut up for a second and I can...I can tell you. Just promise you won’t hate me okay, I know you’re civil around Goodnight and Billy but I don’t want you think - I mean I’ve met people who are against it and I know your mama raised you catholic but - well I just - I won’t force anything okay? There's no pressure nothing will change I just, uh - ah, shit.”

“I think all that lost blood is getting to you hombre, making you loco.” Vasquez mutters, nervously looking around, his gun now firmly planted back in his hand. He doesn’t know what Faraday is doing, but he knows what some stupid part of him hopes it is. And he doesn’t like it, in fact he's taken measures to squash that hope time and time again. It has yet to work. So in a way, if Joshua is about to spew out that his last dying confession, Vasquez should be happy.

He’s not. Because he doesn’t want to hear it like this, doesn’t want to know that he could have said something back in Rose Creek and maybe Faraday would’ve been okay with it then. He doesn’t want this to be his love's _dying_ confession, he wants him to say it and _live_.

“Maybe.” Faraday says weakly, but continues despite his increasingly heavy eyelids. He knows what dying feels like. He’s done it before. “Maybe, or maybe I’ve been crazy all along and now I'm just becoming sane. Either way I-” Joshua has to stop, catch his breath and wet his lips with his tongue because he can’t really feel the pain anymore, all he feels is the cold air and his stomach tying itself into knots. “-I like you Vas. I...a lot. More than I should honestly. And- and I-mpf!”

The last exclamation is surprised and muffled by Vasquez’s lips slamming into his own. They taste like sweat and something strangely sweet- although Faraday supposes he might be imagining things at this point. Because there's no way Vasquez would pull away to breathe only to say something like “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to do that.”

Joshua manages a sloppy grin. “Oh g’d.” He slurs. “Was ‘fraid y’d…” _‘leave me alone’_ , Faraday tries to finish, but it all comes out garbled and unintelligible and before he can try to fight it, he’s already slipped into darkness, Vas’s scared face etched into his memory.

**…**

Faraday peels his eyes open to a dim room and an argument. He can’t seem to make out the words, but the raised voices and angry tones make it relatively clear to his muddled brain, even if it's happening on the other side of the wall. He slowly casts his gaze around the room, although it does take a considerable amount of effort. It's a decent sized room, walls a simple white. There's another bed against the opposite wall, and next to him is a small bedside table with a bowl of water and cloth. Completing the bedroom is a wash bowl and desk in each corner.

For one, seriously delusional second, he thinks he’s back in Rose Creek, and the past few months had been one strange dream.

And the shouting gets abruptly louder, and Faraday decides he wants to go back to sleep. Not a hard task it seems, as his eyes drift shut. Before he completely gives up consciousness though, he hears the door to the room slam shut and a pair of boots clink over to his bedside.

_Vasquez?_

**….**

“He didn’t mean that Billy.” The Asian man nods, not a smidgen of anger showing on his face. Instead, he actually seems worried.

“I know Goodie. He hasn’t slept since we found him, and I sincerely doubt he took a nap while he was dragging Faraday across that desert. It is not his fault.”

“No.” Robicheaux sighs. “But he doesn’t believe that.”

“He’s lucky he’s believing anything at all.” Chisholm responds, setting down the last of the saddlebags on the floor in front of the sharpshooters feet. Goodnight immediately digs around in one of them, handing a smaller roll of cloth to his partner and taking another bag out for himself. The couple starts cleaning or sharpening their respective weapons as Sam seats himself on a chair next to them. “If we hadn’t heard the truth of what they were riding into they’d have been dead before we even knew something was wrong.”

“All Vasquez is gonna see is that he let Faraday basically die, and seeing as both those men are more stubborn than an old mule, you’d have good luck tryin’ to change his mind.”

“Vasquez didn’t _let_ anyone do anything.”

“You’ll have a hard time convincing him of that.” A lone female voice sounds in the hallway, clear and strong. “You missed the argument Mister Chisholm. There was a _spectacular_ amount of self loathing coming from your Mexican. I expect he’ll be moping around my house till that boy of yours wakes up.”

“Any idea when that’ll be Miss Jade?” The woman in question - an educated widow who’s studied medicine since she was a child, learning it first from her daddy's eldest slave, and then putting more technique into practice during the war that took her husband - grew up in Georgia and was witness to Sherman's march to the sea. She left to move west, and was the closest thing they could get to a hospital. Apparently both Sam and Goodnight had met her before and when the rag tag group showed up at her door to early in the morning for any respectable person to be awake, she answered after two knock and a raised eyebrow.

Quickly bossing everyone around in a way that called for no argument, she effectively saved their own sometimes-drunk cowboy. By some miracle there has yet to be any infection, and the only thing they were battling was a slight fever and the blood loss.

And Vasquez, who seems angry at everyone and everything.

“Sometime soon I suppose. I’d say you’re welcome to sit with him, but I don’t need to be treatin’ any of you folk if his lover decides to pull that gun of his.” Billy raises an eyebrow, turning a knife over to inspect it under the light.

“Good point.” He comments, watching as she dumps some potatoes onto the kitchen counter. “Need help?” (They’ve all learned to ask first, because the last time Horne tried to do something for her she almost bit his head off.)

“No thank you, I’ve got that... _larger_ man helpin’ me. He wouldn’t shut up until I said yes.” She mutters the last part under her breath, walking back down the pantry to get more supplies, letting the three men at the table laugh for the first time in weeks.

When they quiet, the silence is more empty than before.

“What are we going to do about Fire Street, Sam? If there's as many men as we think there are…”

“We fought worse odds, Goodie.”

“Rose Creek was different. Smaller, and they underestimated us severely. Plus the townspeople actually _wanted_ to help. From what we’ve gotten out of Vasquez, these people are either on their side, or are too scared not to be.”

“Who says we even have to go back? We could go east, get real law to help us. It's not like the group is just going to move on.”

“No that won’t work.” Billy mutters, flinging his knife across the room and nodding in satisfaction when it sinks to the hilt in the wall. “That would split us up. Besides, Joshua would never leave his damn horse.”

Sam blinks, frowning thoughtfully.

“Now that you mention him, it might be in our best interest to put Jack to good use.” Goodnight swings his head around in surprise.

“You mean you want him to do something other than kill anyone within ten feet of him?” Chisolm just grins.

“Nope.”

**….**

“ _Date prisa y despierta guero._ You have a lot of explaining to do.” Vasquez mutters as he squirms in the hard wooden desk chair he stole from the other side of the room. He’s kicked up his feet onto the mattress, trying and failing to alleviate the pain in his back.

It's been almost two days since they arrived, and since then the only sign of life from the man has been his chest rising and falling consistently. Vasquez thinks he should be thankful. He could have been dead ten times over. Instead, the outlaw ( _former_ , he reminds himself) is complaining about how long it's taken for his stupid companion to wake so he can yell at him for waiting so fucking long to tell him.

It had taken everything Vasquez had to not break when Faraday passed out. Some idiotic part of him refused to accept the fact that Joshua was going to die, and while he swore the man to hell and back in his native language, he didn’t just _stop functioning_ like he wanted to. No, he did his best to clean the wound again, ripping more cloth to fold and press very hard against the wound, all while his brain screamed at him for not saying _anything_.

His stupid, dumbass (and slightly delusional) cowboy had finally decided that he ought to say something to him, he had _actually tried to acknowledge his emotions_ (which was how Vasquez knew he was delusional) and all Vas managed to do was try and tell him to shut up.

Not “ _I like you too, I have since Rose Creek, I might even fucking love you._ ” but instead a sharp “ _enough_ ” because Vasquez - Vasquez didn’t want his last memory with him to be that. To know what they _could've_ been - what they _should've_ been - but weren’t, because underneath all his whisky and card tricks and loud jokes is _Joshua Faraday_ , who has never been able to have what he wants, and is perpetually afraid of losing what he does have.

Vasquez is not stupid. He knows damn well what Faraday was thinking, because while he’s been waiting for him for such a long time, he also wondered what it would be like if they didn’t work out. If they got so angry with each other they lost themselves and said things that couldn’t be taken back, if they did things that couldn’t be forgiven. Both could control their tempers, but on the few times they couldn’t, it would take more than one person to stop them. So far neither had lost it at the same time or with each other, but it was only a matter of time. One of their joking arguments would turn real and it would hurt more than Vasquez would be willing to admit.

Not for the first time he wonders which would be worse: knowing Faraday was alive, but hated him, or knowing he died loving him.

He had recently crossed off the third option, (knowing he died without understanding what he meant to Vas) with that impulsive liplock bullshit. He wasn’t supposed to be dying when they had their first kiss, and Vasquez wasn’t supposed to be crying, and his lips shouldn’t have tasted like blood.

But they did and he was. And somehow that makes sense, because Joshua never did what he was supposed to do.

Vasquez always expected to tell him first. For something to happen, or for both of them to be really drunk and wake up the next morning with him in his bed. He’s waited for this for so long, and now it's there and it's open and raw and he doesn’t know what to do, because he needs Faraday to tell him - to _prove_ to him - that this doesn’t change everything.

But it does. It will. Finally admitting that this thing exists between them leaves the playing field wide open. The constant banter, the racial slurs and insults they throw at each other like children throw stones, the _comfortableness_ they’ve found is now not enough, or maybe it's too much.

“W’d you st’p w’rr’n alre’dy ya giv’n me a h’dache.” Vasquez jerks upright, soles of his feet slapping against the floor as he scrambles to stay in the chair.

“ _Madre de dios, cabron_!” The tired man yells, pulling at his hair in stress as he blows a breath out through his nose. Faraday just grins.

“Thank you for that heart attack.”

“Aw it wasn’t much trouble.” The slur in his voice is less present as he seems to gain more awareness, but the exhaustion is still heard.

“Go back to sleep guero, we can talk when you're coherent.” The second the words leave his mouth Vasquez wants to slam his head against the wall. He’s been sitting here waiting for exactly this to happen for the last day and a half and the third sentence out of his mouth is ‘ _go to sleep_.’

“Did you mean it?” The question knocks him off guard, making Vas turn his gaze towards his still healing... _something_ (because its not friends, no, not anymore, but he’s afraid to call him his lover.)

“Mean what?”

“What you said. About...wishing you had done it awhile ago.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific guero, my brain is mush.”

“You - you fucking kissed me. Which was so unfair because _I_ was in the middle of my stoic last words and you just ran right over me.” A deep laugh erupts from Vasquez and Faraday manages a relieved smile.

“Are you complaining?” Joshua scrunches his brow like he’s actually thinking about it.

“No.” He finally says, grinning cheekily up at his (‘his!’ Faraday thinks giddily) Texican. “But I will be if you don’t do it again. And soon becau-, woah, hey! Injured man here!”

“Don’t flaunt it _anamte_ , I might think you prefer to be that way.” Vasquez growls, having shoved his hip against Faraday's to get on the bed. Sitting just on the edge, he leans over and pushes his lips none to gently into those of the other.

Faraday has kissed a lot of women (and a few men) in his life. But never, _never_ has he been kissed like this.

Vasquez’s lips were soft but greedy, stealing his breath away and causing him to see stars. One of his hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer, deepening the kiss until Joshua felt lightheaded with yearning. Something strong and bright exploded in his stomach, twisting around in warm pleasure that stole the pain away from his side and for just a second made him forget the rest of the world.

It was Vasquez who pulled back first, both of them gasping for air.

“Vas…” He breathes, wanting more but knowing he can’t have it, not yet.

“No more talking.” Vasquez whispers, running a hand through his lovers brown curls. “Scoot over guero.” Faraday easily complies, adrenaline and excitement still rushing through his veins. Vasquez sits up slightly, allowing the injured man to curl carefully into his side, head resting on his shoulder.

“Damn Mexican, couldn’t have done this sooner, huh.” Faraday grumbles.

“Go to sleep, guero.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is my first story in third person and in this fandom, I hope you enjoyed. All translations were done by google so if they're weird, I'm sorry. I'm a sucker for Chris Pratt and he was just too good in this movie.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment. If you have any prompts for this fandom you might want please drop them here and ill take a look!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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